Censored language the mind-prison of The Group

The bottom-line goal of all social constructs is convincing individuals they are, first and foremost, part of a group.

If this strategy for control succeeds, then criminals and hustlers of every stripe can peddle their stench-ridden wares. To groups.

The collective is, above all, a funnel down into which propaganda can be poured, like swamp water.

You are black. You are white. You are blue. You are purple. You’re a Jew. You’re a Christian. You’re a Muslim. Above all else, that’s what you are. That’s the game. That’s the con.

You’re not you. No. You’re not unique. No. You’re not an individual. No. You’re in a group. You always were. You always will be.

And because you’re green with red polka dots, all sorts of statements apply directly to you. Some of those statements are acceptable, and some are not. Some words directed at you are reasonable, and some are illegitimate. The illegitimate words must be censored and banned. The people who speak those words must be punished and exiled.

God forbid, you, as a green person with red polka dots, should realize you are fundamentally beyond red and green, you are something far more, you are you and no one else is you. The State doesn’t want you to realize that.

The State doesn’t want you to realize you’re outside. You’re not supposed to be that free. You’re not supposed to claim you’re that free.

You’re supposed to be a fragment of a huddled mass defending itself against illegitimate language. That’s one of your main jobs.

And if you walk away, if you leave the group, you’re a traitor. You’re a deserter.

If you stay in the group forever, you’re good.

You’re in a mind-prison, where you ought to be.

And from prison, you can declare, over and over, how wonderful your group is. And if you discover these declarations do nothing for you, personally, in your efforts to improve your life, that’s perfectly all right. That’s normal. You can pretend. You can fake it. You can assert that things are getting better for you, because your group is receiving more special attention, more positive attention.

Yes, social movements and political movements have brought about positive change for groups. Of course. But the whole purpose of these changes should be to funnel members in those groups up into being individuals, not members.

Liberation of the individual is the purpose.

The State and other repressive forces want people to stay in groups and think of themselves in those terms. Always.

There are many strategies for doing this. One of them is: make sure attack- language is used against the group. And then try to censor that language.

“Group member” is an artifact. It’s an ID card. It’s shorthand. These days, it’s becoming, through social pressure, mandatory. “You’re in group X.”

“The unity of the manipulated collective consists in the negation of each individual and in the scorn poured on the type of society which could make people into individuals.” (Max Horkheimer asnd Theodor Adorno, “Dialectic of Enlightenment”)

In the long run, The Group is painted as “inherently special,” but with none of the qualities that truly make the individual free and powerful.

Which is the whole point, as far as the State is concerned: make the individual powerless, make him disappear.

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.” (James Fenimore Cooper, “On Individuality”)

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”)

Face it. In order for any group to receive “special attention,” it must remain a group. Its members must not ascend to becoming individuals who graduate from the group. The group must always, therefore, appear to be under attack. And if this project lags, attacks must be concocted and promoted.

To be more precise, there is a spectrum. At one end is the group-swamp. All the members have forsaken their individuality and identify with the prime group-characteristic. Then there is the free and awake and strong individual. Then there is the group composed of such free individuals, who see the wisdom of cooperation, without sacrificing themselves on the altar of fear, without feeling they must Belong.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Good stuff. With the state-of-the-art manipulative techniques that have grown out of Bernays’s work and modern technology (TV in every home, etc)…I sometimes wonder whether the U.S. population might be the most *effectively* propagandized people on record.

Super-awesome article! Over the last year or so Jon has helped me to see the ways in which I have identified with groups without even realizing it, and I do feel more free and powerful.
I’ve always thought of myself as more of a loner and free mind but all along I was unconsciously identifying with my race and my country and my parents religion, despite being skeptical, critical and to some degree judgmental of them all. Making the choice consciously to pose as an individual free of these associations was not enough in itself to free my mind of the group identities, and I wouldn’t bet money now that I am completely free yet even after seeing more clearly the truth.
Even at this stage I am a powerfully creative person, but a true individual,without a need to belong, I am not. It is practically “common sense” these days that a person should have some innate human desire to belong to a group, it’s pretty much taught in schools as an undeniable fact of nature, and everyone takes it for granted, anyone who doesn’t have this desire is someone to be feared and shunned.
There is a reasoning that our egos can’t handle the idea of being just one more of billions of humans, and that to be special you have to imagine yourself a bigger fish in a smaller pond of people. In reality, this makes a person even less special because they have to first deny their own unique specialness to themselves, which is what public and religious schooling and modern parenting is geared towards. And these group swamps, as Jon calls them, actually work against a more unified humanity by dividing people and pitting them against each through the use of symbology and stereotypes, which appeal to humanity’s over active pattern recognition abilities and desire to categorize for the sake of simplicity.
I imagine it helped at some point in our evolution to be able to recognize threats more easily, just as our fight or flight response helped us, but at this point In our evolution these abilities are more often a hindrance than a help in our personal lives and to our evolution and our long term survival as a species. I know it’s easier for me to see all police officers as a threat to my safety and well being because I like certain plants and I’ve been a victim of police brutality just because they thought I had threw some OTC pills in a river (which I didn’t, I just couldn’t remember which of the many pockets in my fishing vest I put them and they were threatening me with BS charges if I couldn’t find them). This is despite my realization that 20-40% of them are probably doing it because they really think they are serving the public and at least a small percentage of them actually are (the rest are a bunch bloodsucking bully vampires).
This stereotyping could be beneficial or detrimental, but it is more than just a rational thought process going on here. I was traumatized by those assholes, beaten and shocked with tasers while my friends weren’t there to witness while being in full compliance and pleading with them. I feel like a cat does around an unfamiliar dog when I am near an officer. I’m not sure I can ever get past that. I’ve been made to feel like a criminal by actual criminals even though I am no threat to anyone, not even myself, and that is a heavy weight to me. Well I guess am actually percieved as a threat in their minds, and as Jon so often points out: as a free individual, I am a threat by default to the powers that be who seek to control the world through the strategy of divide and conquer through the use of group identities. This is some pretty deep shit! How they use the idea of “the greater good” to entice people into trading their individuality for a group in an effort to devide humanity into controllable segments which they then pit against each other to further consolidate the wealth and power of the world into the hands of a few. And it seems to keep getting deeper and deeper. 🙂
It really is a pretty ingenious plan, it has been working for a very long time, but it seems unlikely to me that it will work forever. Hopefully the whole planet won’t be made uninhabitable before the great hoarders lose their grip. They have pretty much already succeeded in enslaving the entire population with their monetary system that is really a system of debt.
We’re almost completely into the distopia that we were warned of by certain authors of mid 1900’s. It is sort of a strange blend of 1984 and Brave New World if you ask me. I just wish they’d go ahead and incorporate the moksha or soma or whatever they want to call it. I could see canabis or some psychedelic such as ayahuasca or LSD being used effectively to help people connect with themselves and others to help facilitate a peaceful loving society, and to some degree they are used an escape mechanism and, in the case of canabis, to placate and dull one’s senses to the wrongdoings of their governments and the suffering caused to so many over group differences, but they won’t adopt these due to the fact that they don’t completely work, and in many cases, backfire, leading people to think and talk among each other about the big con. For moksha or soma to really help society In the manner described by Huxley, there would have to be an external setting of complete trust – these drugs may provide escape and create apathy in some, but they don’t create unwarranted trust and acceptance of the status quo like soma seemed to do in Brave New World.

Once you have been under attack or hurt by others, it is important to shake this off if you can. It can leave a type of imprint on you. I can only speak from personal experience. I have been very hurt by other people for a long time. So when I go into new situations, I get into alert mode of being hurt again. Thinking about it eats away at me, kills me. Especially as this has been cumulative hurt, with little healing.
For me now, freedom means the ability to live without being hurt by others. The ability to actually feel and be loved. I do this by providing myself with things that provide me an alternative feeling-things that nourish me instead of hurting me. I want to give myself nourishment. Another way is by creating. By creating, you are creating love, which is opposite to a force crushing you. Crushing can mean anything, like being disrespected and emotionally hurt. It is the way out.

As I’ve been studying systems, consciousness and the self over the past few years, it seems to me that at the core of many of our current political and economic conflicts is what is perhaps a timeless struggle of the individual versus the collective.

I don’t fit in “the group” – I resist the effort to be herded. I hear a lot of “You have a funny way of looking at things.” and “You can’t say that!” to which I reply “I’m not laughing.” and “But I just did.” Every person I’ve ever said those things to has went dead silent with an unblinking stare, then they recover, chuckle uncomfortably and move on, back safe in their group cocoon. Censored language is a prison people put themselves in and they have the key in their pocket and won’t use it.

funny how it is groups that lobby gov for this or that, so the gov recognizes the group (who just so happen to pay them a lot of money but I am sure that doesn’t influence their decisions any, NOT!) but refuse to recognize individuals, after all a group is made up of individual the group itself is not a alive or doesn’t even exist, all you have is a organized individuals working together for some common purpose or goal they all share in common. I bet if a lot fo individuals got together pooled their money together and gave it to certain politicians they might pass legislation or subsides that benefit the group (or individuals who have common or same interests) but for the lone man or woman unless tey are super wealthy would not affect a politician much with the few dollars they can give as contribution. so gov is a group of individuals with common interests (get rich and powerful without earning it) so in reality they aer just individuals with the same greed and same goals that are most likely not to the benefit of the people at large. this group thing you mention in the article makes me think of commercials where they say 9 out of 10 whoever recommends this product, but they never tell you the names of the doctors or dentists or groups of americans who believe that taxes to pay for nationalized health care for all as an example)who want this. it is easy to say we are doing this for the poor, which poor is that? who are they? and how will it help them not to be poor longterm, who are these doctors or lawyers or judges or scientists you say recommend or agree or disagree by consenses? these people do not exist it is imagainary consences and support. who are people in government who keep speaking for people who have not authorized htem to speak for them? they are just making this stuff up. bearing false witness breaks Jehovahs laws, which is what one is doing if they pretend to know what others want and speak for them to law makers and judges or whomever that have longterm negative effects. a relative of my hubby tried to get a loan once by saying that his grandmother was co signing for him (even tho she was not even there and did not even know about it)she would back the loan he said but that was a lie, he commited fraud. he should of been put in jail. good thing they called his grandmother first. I guess he is retarded to think they were just going to take his word on it, to bad those in government who make laws and give out subsides for noble causes do not do the same thing, hey lets call the American people first to see if they will go surety for this loan or bailout or tax breaks for this company or other. they just take the seeker of the loans word for it. shameful. they just contract you as third party without your consent.